Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Launches OSS Site, Submits License For Approval
prostoalex writes "Microsoft has launched a site dedicated to collaboration between Microsoft and open source community. The site helps developers, IT administrators, and IT buyers find out what Microsoft's product offerings are, and read articles about open source such as 'Open Source Provider Sees Sales Doubling After Moving Solutions to the Windows Platform.'" Relatedly, CNet has the news that the company has submitted its shared-sources license to the OSI for approval.
for their "Spin" artice as an example.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Microsoft is now trying to catch some of the OSS halo effect... while trying to figure out how to own it... or at least trash it? Who do they think is going to buy into anything like this? I guess when your primary business model is going down in flames, you need to co-opt someone else's.
Most of the stuff on
It seems Microsoft's approach on this site, is to twist the terminology and meaning of Open Source to link it to their products.
From the site (microsoft.com/opensource), they've linked to a PDF explaining how SharePoint (first link, 'share' and 'open') is the 'Road To Open' and the Sharepoint Learning Kit (SLK) has been released under Microsoft's own OSI-submitted open source license.
Could the idea be to confuse the average consumers (and buzz-word obsessed manager types) into thinking Microsoft when they hear 'Open Source'?
Either way, it's interesting to see them formally acknowledge their opponents - again!
ilovegeorgebush
If you can't beat 'em, join' em?
I mean, at the end of the day, a large chunk of OSS developers also have regular day jobs coding proprietary software for money. The money in OSS is in support, not in the end product itself.
Secondly, OSS only works for products, and we all know how the product-service life-cycle goes. So, if Microsoft can't make money out of a product, they can make money out of a service.
And so, even MS can now say that they are doing that "Open Source thing" when a potential customer's (tech-ignorant) management asks them.
This is probably a first step to that end. News at 11.
Windows is an pathetic excuse for a platform. It doesn't even properly implement the minimal syscalls required by the POSIX standard (open, close, read, write, fork, exec).
If they actually cared about getting more open source developers to port their applications to Windows, they'd harmonise their API with the other major operating systems (Linux, OS X, Solaris, *BSD). As it is, this just looks like (yet another) an attempt by Microsoft to paint over the gaping flaws in both their business model and their approach to software development.
Wake me up when that changes. Until then, I really couldn't give a shit about Microsoft's supposed "friendliness" to open source software or their non-free "open" license.
Pirate Party UK
I haven't read the article, I haven't seen the site or the license they submitted.
But I know Microsoft. It's a trap. Either short-term, or long-term. Somehow, this is designed to ultimately restrict our freedoms or slow down the replacement of non-free software with free software.
You may call be bigoted, or a troll. I see my view on this particular issue as just highly conditioned from decades of experience.
So, I'll take it as a given that no one reading this would ever consider contributing code to M$ "OSS" sites. So then the only other use for us would be to utilize their code in our products. I would recommend considering the following:
For me, it would be more trouble than it's worth to use M$ code in any of my projects.
Thank God for evolution.
This is how to do it:
"Claims that Open Source Software would be legally troublesome or low quality are completely unfounded. Plenty of large organisations are deeply ivolved with open source development and recognise its potential. As an example, even Microsoft, a company traditionally commited to the closed source model and a long standing sceptic of many open source projects, has recently started to use it for its own codebase and has launched open source initiatives of its own: . Althou the project has had some problems, some of whic were related to the inability of the closed portion of the software to interoperate with the open bit, the work proceeds and recent developments has lead some analysts to predict the company may consider using the same model for other projects as well."
Lets see them try to argue with that one... If they claim the article is accurate they will be promoting OSS. If they claim the project has problems they are admitting that yet another of their projects is a complete failure. If they try to claim the proprietary bit is doing well but the open bit is doing bad, they will piss off anyone participating which could easily lead to a good chunk of bad press. Lets help them shoot themselves in the foot.
I really wouldn't mind a new computer.
Me neither, but we are not average users. The average user has been on the upgrade treadmill long enough to know they are working hard to stand still, but they don't see an escape yet. Many of them wish they never saw a computer and are ready to give up.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There's as much chance as a snowball's chance in hell of Microsoft getting much support from OSS. Utter incompetence is involved in their attempt to embrace and extinguish campaign.
Really, they have Ballmer yelling extortion attempts at every Linux user and they have some maverick manager or programmer, that while in Asia, claiming that 2007 is the year of the death of OSS.
These people are not only distorted, they are crazy foolish.
Microsoft needs to just understand that OSS will sooner or later out develop them. They need to also understand that everyone is on guard like a farmer with a shotgun protecting their daughters from the Microsoft Bible salesmen.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
The fact is that if Microsoft could kill Linux with all these wonderful patents it would have already. Just because something violates a patent doesn't mean that the patent should even exist at all.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Remember that Open Source isn't the same as Free Software. And that open source is something still else...and can easily be "look but don't touch".
Given that MS is asking OSI to approve their license I'd guess that it's not like the olde open source libraries that used to be provided...where the library was distributed, perhaps, along with a compiler, but you weren't permitted to use it with any other compiler.
OTOH: This license was written by lawyers and proposed by MS. I'm not going to trust it until years have passed, and then only after a succession of lawyers have found it harmless. (IANAL, so I'm not going to trust my interpretation of something MS had a lawyer write for them, even though I'm allowed to read it, unlike their EULAs, where you must purchase the product to which they apply before you're allowed to read them. And then you've got to accept a new, possibly more restrictive, license with each bug fix.)
I accept that it is conceivable that MS seriously is trying to make a truce. Unfortunately, given their track record the only safe and sensible response is to, at minimum, turn a deaf ear. So I'm not going to even bother looking. It might be tempting, but being tempted and succumbing would likely be fatal (economically if not physically).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.